Experts forecast digital transformation boom

GIFT NDOLWANEJOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – TECHNOLOGY industry leaders are projecting the coming months to usher in a digital ‘gold’ rush with the likes of Big Data, cloud computing, and virtualization becoming familiar territory.
Experts point out 2016 has been one where companies have started repositioning themselves to take advantage of the evolution towards digital.
Riaan Graham, Sales Director at Ruckus Wireless, sub-Saharan Africa, says high performance networks and solutions providing superior performance will be a major
driver of what service providers will have to offer in the coming months.
“While cost used to be a driver for connecting people, the focus has turned to performance. People have become unforgiving of unresponsiveness whether that is
watching streaming movies at home or accessing critical back-end data on an app while meeting with a client,” Graham adds.
Graham says technology that provides for additional insights will be critical going forward. He cites Wi-Fi location-based services as an example. This can provide
companies with key data on becoming more efficient with connectivity and providing supporting services to cater for what users want.
Grant Theis, co-founder of ttrumpet, says over the past few months, businesses have shifted from an informing model to a communicating and engaging one.
This has seen social software for business becoming widely adopted with applications to enhance relationships, collaboration, networking, social validation, and more.
“A result of this has been the rise of the bot, and in particular Intelligent Agents,” says Theis.
Stefan Marnewick, CEO of Incredible Connection, believes this points to not only a changing mindset amongst business users, but also consumers and their buying
patterns.
He says consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across an increasing range of devices.
“Ultimately, they are looking for interactive and engaging online and retail environments. These expectations extend to options to pay, trade-in, swap, rent, and
share,” Marnewick says.
Gavin Meyer, executive director at Itec SA, says the focus will be about digitalising business through solutions that are tailored to the specific
organisational structure and needs, as well as those that meet the demands of the customer network of a company.
He says globally, organisations are driven by consumer demand to create more digitalised businesses.
“This means that these companies must have a stronger online presence and back-end services and solutions that are streamlined, integrated, and innovative from a
technology stand point,” Meyer adds.
– CAJ News